During the 1790s, newspapers gained unprecedented prominence in political debate throughout the British Isles. In part this derived from the particular strengths of the newspaper as a means of political communication. Newspapers were, a contemporary declared, ‘so much better adapted to the time, capacity and circumstances’ of people than ‘books and pamphlets’. They would, another remarked, continue to be read ‘when the pamphlet and its subject are buried in oblivion’. More importantly, their serial nature and regularity of appearance enabled them to build relationships with and between readers quite unlike other forms of print, with the possible exception of some periodicals. For radicals of the period especially, being linked to these circuits of communication helped to shore up their political resolve by giving them a sense of belonging to a wider movement or body of opinion. This was the reason why placing resolutions and notices in the press was so important to radical societies; and conversely why being prevented from so doing was potentially very damaging to their cause. For many radicals newspapers had an additional, ideological meaning as the pre-eminent vehicles for the political instruction of the ‘people’. Through the press, radicals might, quite literally, write and print into being a new sort of political order based on the principles of openness, transparency and reason. The irony was of course that newspapers might just as easily become instruments of political reaction, as indeed would prove to be the case in Britain, and especially Scotland, in this period.

Newspapers were also very widely available in British society by the 1790s. This was despite their not being especially cheap, and their print runs typically being quite small, especially in comparison to the final third of the nineteenth century, which saw the emergence of a genuinely popular press. Their costs, in fact, rose quite sharply under the impact of successive increases in stamp duty in 1789, 1794 and 1797. On the last of these occasions, the rise was particularly marked, typically from 4 to 6d. for a single issue, an increase which seems to have depressed demand for newspapers appreciably.